modelling from scanned point cloud?

[Rich O]

I'm working with these guys who have a LIDAR scanner which creates point clouds of entire buildings. They've asked me to do some renders for them.

 

Does anyone have any workflows for getting texture information onto the models? The models will at this stage be Revit models traced over the point cloud and I was going to bring them into Maya to render with V-ray...but I have no idea how to handle creating and mapping 'whole building' photographic textures to them.

 

I had thought about doing some sort of image-based modelling but I think they want 'BIM usable' models : /

 

Any ideas would be great!

[dande]

The scanners should take pictures of the buildings as they are scanning. You will need to hold of these photos. Usually these photos need to be ortho rectified in photoshop. Then in max or maya you can place the photos on the buildings as textures

 

I'm not sure about Maya but in Max you can link in the Revit file. So if the revit file changes you can easily update the max file.

[Rich O]

Hmm I see. Not sure that their scanner takes pictures.

 

The other problem is converting these point clouds (.las format, but I also have them in .rcs) into meshes. Because trying to trace geometry over the pointclouds in their current state is a nightmare : /

[dande]

Do you have Autodesk Recap. You can open RCS files in that. I think you can export them to las. I'm not sure as I don't have any point cloud date here to check it. If you don't have recap I have it here and I can see if I can convert it.

 

The laser scanner should take pictures when its scanning. You often need the pictures when modelling the point cloud.

 

I found this link you might find useful

 

http://bimopedia.com/2013/04/09/setting-up-your-revit-project-to-model-point-clouds/